


Let her go [or three times where Bellamy lets Clarke go and the one time he doesn't]

by selflessbellamy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 3 + 1 times, F/M, Inspired by 'Let her go' - Passenger, Mommy and daddy missing each other, Mutual respect and so on, Please come home, post 2x16, this was a tumblr prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 23:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3547727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selflessbellamy/pseuds/selflessbellamy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on Tumblr prompt - though changed a little. Inspired by 'Let her go' - Passenger. </p><p>---</p><p>"When you love someone, set them free. If they come back to you, their yours..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let her go [or three times where Bellamy lets Clarke go and the one time he doesn't]

**I**

 

“Please, come inside.” The pleading with broken words is a prayer, and he knows it; sadly knows her better than to think that anyone could ever change her mind when its state is as fragile as now. But he still hopes - Oh, it burns at his heart, that single flicker of whatever hope he has left upon the battle. All that he wants is that they can do this together: heal together for once - partly because the thought of going through it alone scares him more than he would like to admit.

She turns around to look at him, teeth slightly gritted in order to hold back the few tears that have made their way to her eyes. For a quarter of a second it actually seems like she’s thinking about it, yet that fact causes him to tense nervously while there’s nothing left to do except try to regain her attention. The words that leave her mouth break his heart: “Take care of them for me.” _No, don’t do this--_

“Clarke--“ Hearing his own voice crack breeds panic within him: How am _I supposed to convince her to stay when I’m so afraid to let her know that I need her?_ Before he gets the chance to do anything, a struggled explanation is making its way out upon her lips: “Seeing their faces every day, is just gonna remind me of what I did to get them here.”

“What _we_ did. You don’t have to do this alone.” Honestly, he is somewhat surprised at the fact that his reply is immediate, especially as he starts feeling more helpless, losing hope when her facial expression grows even more determined, certain. Damn, he’s a failure. 

 

It’s as if his words mean nothing. But that can’t be the case. Or what?

 

“I bear it so they don’t have to.” There, it hits him, draining the last bit of his hope: Clarke is a leader, and she’s made up her mind. He can do nothing, feeling nauseous at the feeling of her slipping through his fingers yet again - Knowing Clarke - No, _loving_ Clarke is the second to most painful thing he has ever experienced; watching his mother being floated still carrying out first place.  

“Where are you gonna go?” He breathes, his eyes desperately searching for hers.

“I don’t know.” What scares him is not the thought of her being alone out there, since he knows that she will make it, and he would never doubt her ability to survive for a second - Instead, he’s afraid that he might not be able to handle not seeing her face. Also given that they always seem to find the most hurtful ways to separate, the tears in her voice wrenching at his heart, threatening to pull it out. 

She leans up, and at the next moment, he is slightly shocked by the distinct feeling of her lips against his cheek, “May we meet again.” Unintentionally tangling his fingertips in her hair, he fights the familiar weight of a lump in his throat and a stone at his heart. When she lets him go, her breathing only just under control, he receives a second in which he can actually breathe. Yet as soon as he looks at Clarke, who turns her face to the ground, biting her lip a little to hold back tears, oxygen is taken from him again.

Although Clarke starts walking away, he can’t get himself to look for more than a beat. It hurts. Everything hurts, but somehow he feels strangely numb, “May we meet again.”

 

* * *

 

**II**

 

Only a month has passed when Bellamy spots her the first time: maybe she’s not as good at hiding as she would like to be. Since winter is officially approaching, Camp Jaha had to send out two different hunting groups each day in order to find anything eatable out here. So of course, instead of patrolling the fence as he had been originally assigned to, he had been put out here, which is to say the least, torture. 

It doesn’t get better when he lays eyes on her resting on the other side of the river, her legs hiding her face so that he can just recognize her by the golden waves of her hair, which drape down her shoulders, falling around her face.

Obviously, she hasn’t seen him yet despite him having stopped in his tracks, standing petrified for another minute, simply watching her. Suddenly he is hit by a strange want of crossing the river in a few strokes to get to her side, wondering what he would say or do if that was indeed possible. Would he wrap his arms around her frame to shield her? Beg for her to _just come home_? 

Would he tell her about everything that had happened whilst she had been gone, hoping to make her laugh with the ridiculous stories of the adults discovering Monty and Jasper’s moonshine one night?

 

But he knows that she wants to be left alone…

 

 _Really, Bellamy - you never know what you have until it’s gone._ As terrible as it may sound, that was how he felt about her, since he had not been enough for her to stay, but what if he had tried harder? Told her that she couldn’t run and expect for it to all go away (which it clearly hasn’t anyway, judging by the devastating look of her)?

“Bellamy! There isn’t anything here! Lets leave.” Miller calling nearly startles him, and he can only think of one reply, yet it gets stuck in his throat as Clarke abruptly looks up at the sound of familiar voices (“I found something. We should bring her home.”), and meets his gaze with more emotion than he can bear, but he understands what she wants to say, which is: _Please, leave me. You haven’t seen me. Bellamy, I’m begging you._

_‘Cause you loved her too much, and you dived too deep…_

 

_“Can we figure it out later?”_

_Whenever you’re ready, Clarke… Please come back._

Without hesitating further, Bellamy turns around on his heal with that message for her in his eyes, hopeful that they now know each other well enough to uncover such things quickly. It’s not his job to make her return, because in the end he is aware that she’ll do that when she’s healed… And not a second earlier…

* * *

 

**III**

“Tell me why, Bellamy. Why did you let her go?” Well, of all things he sure didn’t expect Abby Griffin to sit down with him to have a cup of moonshine and talk about Clarke - at least not today, with everything going on in medical after the flu hit the camp. But maybe that was the exact time where she needed something else to be sad about. It was beyond him why he had been given such a job… 

He doesn’t look at her as he replies: “I couldn’t make her stay. My words weren’t enough.”

“Words?”

Downing the last bit of his moonshine, Bellamy secretly hopes that it will drown his ability to talk further, but he isn’t a weak drinker and he will never be no matter how much he wants to in certain cases like this one, “I forgave her,” he mumbled, still refusing to meet the mother’s eyes, “because she forgave me for being the monster I was back when we met each other.” Sometimes, Bellamy hated telling the truth, especially at times where it didn’t have that wonderful, freeing effect that people believed so much in ( _the truth will set you free_ = Bullshit.)

Their situations had been different, though. No denying it, he had been a selfish monster, longing for power while also trying to save his own ass by hurting others. Clarke, however, had inspired him, taught him the benefits of having good intensions: Of course, she had done terrible things, they all had, yet she _always_ did it as a leader, to protect her people from downfall. They couldn’t have survived without her strength; the strength he had first seen in her as she killed Atom. 

“You love her, don’t you?” Voice low, those words cross Abby’s lips and cut through his thoughts, forcefully making him look straight into her eyes. He has no idea of what to say, and for the briefest moment, at an instant, he is hit by an abnormal need to cry, yet doesn’t. 

“More than I would like to admit,” Bellamy forces a tiny smile, guilt and other bitter feelings behind it, “but I can’t hold her back. She deserves to heal, Abby. _I had to let her go_.”

 

* * *

 

**[+1]**

 

What if they hadn’t walked past there? Or what if she hadn’t been at that exact place, at that exact time? She wouldn’t have seen them carry him, bloodied and knocked out through the woods. At first, the view shocks her, because she’s never had to deal with an injured _Bellamy_ : sick maybe, yet that was a long time ago. When it comes to him, she feels like an amateur, confused and even scared, so that despite knowing what she must do, there’s still part of her, which thinks that it’s better not to.

But she has to at least see him. With her heart pounding more in her throat than in her chest, she runs to follow them before they are out of sight, trees passing by like a blur of autumn colors that she had thought she would never see, except in her mind of course.

Bellamy Blake didn’t get hurt. Could someone please tell her what this was? It couldn’t possibly be an attack with the peace treaty (as far as she knew) still at hold and The Mountain Men… Dead, which she was horribly sure of, given that she had pulled the lever herself. No - Wait, Bellamy had done it with her. They had done it together.

_“You don’t have to do this alone. You’re forgiven - What we did!”_

Clearly, his words ring in her ears, echo like a scream, shaking her. Three months have already passed, and it is time to finally face it, now with a stinging fear in her chest that something might happen to him before she reaches Camp Jaha. 

Even though a couple of people stand to greet her when she comes running through the gate, her mind is swirling around something other than reunions and explanations. Passing her mother, who has Kane by her side, Clarke heads in the direction of the medical tent - a place she hasn’t been for what appears like an eternity, barging through the opening, Abby and possibly Kane at her heals. 

“What happened?” She struggles to ask shortly before really seeing him, on the cot, now conscious but seemingly suffering from the knockout. Yet he knows it’s her, which tells everyone that it can’t be that bad: “You don’t have to be here, Clarke.” That sounds awfully similar to words she has heard from him before, however she decides not to focus too much on it.

Bending down, she notices two lengthy scratch marks on Bellamy’s leg, which Miller hurries to explain, has been left there by one of those rare, two-headed panthers or whatever it was that they had encountered while trying to find Jasper their second day on Earth - God that felt like such a long time ago.

“It’s not bad. If Miller hadn’t been there, that thing would have eaten me, though.” 

“No doubt about it.” 

Deeply concentrated, Clarke cleans the wounds using some of Monty’s moonshine, and Bellamy doesn’t even wince, because he is focused on her, doing what she had believed she could never do again: help people instead of hurting and killing them. “I need you. And you can’t run from that, Clarke,” Bellamy whispers, hoping that no else in the room hears it. Also, he fears that she may not be ready to stay yet, “please, don’t run. Twice I’ve let you slip through my fingers. I won’t let that happen anymore, not even once.” 

Without thinking, he takes a strand of her hair that is hanging down in front of her face, placing it behind her ear. Perhaps he shouldn’t have done that, but he doesn’t really care, and at last Clarke meets his gaze as he says: “Together?”

“Together.”


End file.
